By Lieba Nesis
Howard Horowitz, Head of Westchester’s People’s Action Coalition Foundation (Wespac), a nonprofit 501(c)(3), has emerged as one of the leading funders of the pro-Hamas demonstrations across the United States. Founded in 1974, Wespac’s supposed guiding principle is “nonviolent protests against injustice, discrimination, war and the causes of climate change.” While keeping its sources of revenue’s secret its lack of transparency has raised a number of red flags. Knowing these protests have been anything but peaceful as calls to annihilate Jews, to repeat October 7th thousands of times, coupled with violent punching, stomping, and pushing of Jewish students as they are forced to flee college campuses for their lives, has made Horowitz’s orthodox upbringing all the more troubling. Wespac is the financial linchpin for dozens of Jew hating organizations including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Within Our Lifetime (WOL) a group led by Muslim Nerdeen Kiswani that has physically harassed students outside the Columbia gates. Kiswani likes to say things such as, “I hope that pop-pop is the last noise Zionists hear in their lifetime.” Wespac does not make its fiscal sponsorships public and its sole employee other than Horowitz is Nada Khader, a Palestinian who has joined Horowitz in placing the blame for October 7th on Israel.
Supporting over 15 anti-Israel groups, Wespac’s laser-like focus remains on the obliteration of Israel. A major proponent of BDS the group’s ties to antisemite Rep. Jamaal Bowman and AOC are no surprise. Wespac’s website and tax documents give no indication of its pro-Palestinian activism making it difficult to track the money that ends up in pro-Palestinian hands. The last revenue statement in 2021 revealed they had assets amounting to over $1 million-however, that amount has increased exponentially since October 7th. Wespac’s sole office is in White Plains as its traces its roots to the 1970’s as a proponent of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. Immediately following October 7th Horowitz stated his outrage at Israel “for its ongoing implementation of genocide involving forced death marches and indiscriminate bombing of 27,000 Gazans” remarking the future of the Jewish people depends on “justice for Palestine.” Wespac has been named as one of the key funders of tent-city encampments at universities and for training protestors on how to wreak havoc after receiving hundred of thousands from George Soros and his Open Society Foundations.
Horowitz’s murky origins have him claiming to have been brought up in Monticello, New York where he attended a Jewish elementary school and public high school. With an orthodox mother and father, the eighty-something year old’s undergraduate work began at NYU where he got both his degree in Psychology and his graduate degree in Political Science with a sociology degree from Bucknell University. He worked on Bill Clinton’s Arkansas governor campaign in the late 70’s and founded Horowitz Associates in 1985 as well as Horowitz Research which currently has 18 employees and which specializes in the marketing of television, computer and internet services for consumers-whatever that means. He is a member of the Israel Action Committee of Temple Israel of New Rochelle, a founding member of Westchester Jewish Coalition for Immigration and an active member of Westchester’s Jewish Voice for Peace. After several stints living in Jerusalem and on a kibbutz in the early 70’s Horowitz moved to Westchester where he became anti-Zionist having felt the partition plan robbed the Palestinians of their homes, livelihood and lands. He then met Alisse Waterston, Professor of Anthropology at John Jay College CUNY, who is also the President of the American Anthropological Association and they have three children together, Dan, Matthew and Leah, and a number of grandchildren. Howard has for years called on Jewish institutions to abandon Israel and has remained a pass-through between larger institutions and pro-Palestinian radicals as groups conducting flood-themed protests including bridge and highway blockades have been funded by Horowitz. As Congress seeks to crack down on domestic terrorist organizations its first steps must be accessing the opaque accounts of covert organizations such as Wespac.
